The Manure Pile

WHEN ARCHAEOLOGISTS EXAMINE THE SITE of an ancient human encampment they search for the latrine area. After eons what endures are little seeds, bones, and bits of microscopic pollen. From these small clues and a little imagination, archaeologists can infer what these ancient people ate and perhaps reconstruct the daily activities of these ancient people.

Without drawing too tight an analogy, it is possible to aver that movies served the same purpose in understanding contemporary culture that manure plays in understanding ancient ones. Two movies offer opposing commentaries on how America thinks of itself.

Drop Dead Gorgeous is a pretentious dark comedy that chronicles a beauty contest in the small Minnesota town of Mount Rose. Satire about small-town America is an old genre. But the best satire comes from love rather than hate of the subject. Mark Twain or Garrison Keiller satire small-towns of America because they love those people. They laugh with us as well as at us. Drop Dead Gorgeous is a small, mean spirited flick that is transparently trite in its targets of contempt.

Of course, there is the young woman, Amber Atkins, vying to win the beauty contest so that she can, like Diane Sawyer, rise from contestant winner to news reporter. Amber's mother is alcoholic trailer-park trash, while her nemesis is Becky Leeman the daughter of a former contest winner and the richest man in town. You know Becky's family is evil because besides being wealthy, they are active in the Lutheran gun club. You can't get much more wicked in the Hollywood value system than being a rich religious person with a gun. Justice wins out in the end as Becky Leeman is consumed in flames on a parade float.

The fatal flaw in Drop Dead Gorgeous is that it actually tries to make social commentary and becomes preachy in its own dark sort of way. Sometimes, even mean-spirited social commentary can be illuminating if it at least has the virtue of intelligence or cleverness. Alas, Drop Dead Gorgeous is just plain drop dead stupid.

By contrast, Blast from the Past succeeds because it does not try too hard. One gets the feeling that it just looks for quick laughs and stumbles on to some truth in spite of itself. The unlikely plot begins in 1962. A slightly unbalanced, but brilliant, scientist builds an elaborate fallout shelter. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the scientist and his pregnant wife flee into the fallout shelter during what they erroneously believe to be a nuclear attack. They emerge 35 years later, when they expect the radioactivity to have dropped to safe levels.

The son of this couple, aptly name Adam, has spent his 35 years of life learning science and history from his father and social graces from his mother. Of course, Adam is a waif in the 1990s burdened with a 1950s openness and honesty. Apparently, the fallout that Adam has been protected from for his 35 years was cultural. Adam maintains a Clark Kent-like earnestness.

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